Paho

This proposal is in the Project Proposal Phase (as defined in the
Eclipse Development Process) and is written to declare its intent and
scope. We solicit additional participation and input from the Eclipse
community. Please send all feedback to the
Eclipse Proposals
Forum.

Background

We now have the ability to
measure, sense and monitor nearly anything in the physical world. Rapid advances
in embedded platforms and wireless connectivity are driving growth of M2M
(Machine-to-Machine) technology and the many industries it serves. By 2020, the
number of connected physical world devices is expected to be in the range of 50
billion, fueled by a 1000x increase in wireless broadband traffic. These
factors are forming a significant industry shift that will not be limited to
device connectivity.

Machine-to-Machine (M2M) solutions such as industrial control, smart
buildings, asset tracking, traffic control and healthcare monitoring, are an
essential and integral part of nearly all industry, enterprise and daily life. Inherent
to M2M is the need to connect objects in the physical world, via sensors,
actuators and other devices, into monitoring, control, business, and consumer software
systems, often over constrained wireless networks. Advances in wireless,
embedded, internet and mobile technologies are now creating all manner of new
objects that can sense, control and connect. Such smart objects not only create
new M2M opportunities, but also expand the availability of device connectivity
to Web and Enterprise IT developers. Whether looked at as an Internet of Things
or a Smarter Planet, people, systems and objects will increasingly need to
communicate and interact with each other in ways that today, cannot yet be
entirely anticipated.

While smart objects and physical world systems are often integrated with Enterprise and Web middleware today, it is often done using proprietary integration models
and combinations of a prolific number of custom protocols and industry standards.

In most established M2M implementations of connected devices, the data
producers and data consumers are programmed to interact in strict and well
defined ways. For example, in a smart city, sensor-based systems can alert
operators of a broken water main and report the extent of flooding in streets
and subways. Well designed open messaging technology would enable solutions
well beyond this, allowing public and private transit systems for example, to
monitor these critical alerts, adjusting their routes and even notifying
commuters and customers of alternative routes, transportation, lodging and
meals. Social networks could subscribe, allowing residents and commuters to
interact, adapt and even provide feedback and status to the city.

In an example like this, the M2M system monitoring the water main would not,
in its original design, have been able to communicate or interact with the
traffic systems or residents. The next generation of messaging technology will
support an architecture that enables a more spontaneous reuse and rerouting of
data with minimal programming or reconfiguration of legacy monitoring systems.

Open source messaging components are needed that can cater to the
serendipitous nature of data and events from the physical world around us,
accelerating and opening new markets. These components will of course have to support
the open messaging models prevalent on the Web. They will have to meet high
volume, low latency transaction requirements expected by Enterprise IT. At
the same time, they will have to work equally well across the constrained
networks and embedded platforms that are inherent to physical world of machine-to-machine
systems. This will enable a paradigm shift from legacy point-to-point
protocols and the limitations of protocols like SOAP or HTTP into more loosely
coupled yet determinable models. It will bridge the SOA, REST, Pub/Sub and
other middleware architectures already well understood by Web 2.0 and
Enterprise IT shops today, with the embedded and wireless device architectures
inherent to M2M.

Scope

The scope of the Paho project is to provide open source implementations of open
and standard messaging protocols that support current and emerging requirements
of M2M integration with Web and Enterprise middleware and applications. It
will include client implementations for use on embedded platforms along with
corresponding server support as determined by the community.

In order for M2M device and client developers to integrate, develop and test
messaging components end-to-end, Paho will address the development of
frameworks and sample code needed to support testing and development of end-to-end
device connectivity with a server. The project will make these available in an
Eclipse M2M sever “sandbox”, as recommended by the Eclipse M2M Industry
Working Group.

The Paho project scope includes the development of tooling that will support
effective use, integration and testing of the messaging components.

Description

Architectural requirements for network, client and server support will be
developed with the Eclipse Machine-to-Machine Industry Working Group and will
include, but are not necessarily limited to:

Bi-directional
messaging that can handle both signals and commands from devices, as well as supporting
the provisioning and configuration of physical world systems. Bi-directional
messaging also enables an important characteristic of the next generation of
M2M solutions: the ability to configure or move processing closer to the
physical world systems as needed, in support of changing business requirements
and the constant reshaping of the Web.

Determinable
delivery of messages to and from sensors, actuators, and other resource
constrained devices connected by intermittent or constrained networks.

Provide
loose coupling in highly dynamic system environments where large volumes of
physical word events and messages that need to be made available to the Enterprise, Web, and other consumers in ways that may not always be anticipated. This
should include time, space and synchronization decoupling that will avoid
unnecessarily tight binding between systems.

Constrained
platforms: Instrumentation of the physical world must be supported in an
extremely fragmented space where technologies, platforms and network choices
are driven by very diverse equations of cost, technology and physical constraints.

Why Eclipse?

Eclipse has long had a focus on open tooling, runtimes, frameworks,
standards and software architecture. The Eclipse Foundation has initiated an
M2M Industry Working Group, recognizing the importance of growing and scaling
device connectivity solutions needed to realize new business opportunities and
keep markets open. Eclipse has a large and diverse membership, an established
industry presence, and a proven track record on technology projects. The
industry working group will provide a forum for discussing the broad topics of
machine-to-machine communications while the Paho open source project will make
implementations of advanced messaging technology readily available to M2M, Web
and Enterprise customers, working to improve adoption.

The Paho project will have relationships with Equinox and
other Eclipse projects, including the Koneki project and other tooling projects
used by embedded, enterprise and Web developers.

Initial Contribution

The initial code contribution to Paho will include Java and C client-side implementations
the MQTT
protocol, contributed by IBM. MQTT is a lightweight publish/subscribe
protocol designed for mobile and remote devices, wireless connectivity, and dealing
with lossy, constrained and/or intermittent network characteristics.

Eurotech will contribute
the implementation of a framework and sample applications which device and
client developers can use when integrating and testing Paho messaging
components. This will require the setup of an appropriate M2M test server which
will be worked out with the Eclipse Foundation. The architecture for this
sandbox will be coordinated with the M2M Industry Working Group.

Legal Issues

No known legal issues. Work will be done under EPL.

Committers

The following individuals are proposed as initial committers to the project:

Project Leader: Scott de Deugd (IBM)

Committer: Ian Craggs (IBM)

Committer: Chad Kienle (Eurotech)

Committer: Dave Locke (IBM)

All listed committers authored the initial contribution.

We welcome additional committers and contributions.

Mentors

The following Architecture Council members will mentor this
project:

David Williams

John Duimovich

Interested Parties

The following individuals, organisations, companies and projects have
expressed interest in this project: